Wow and Flutter

Copenhagen show, June 28 at the Artists Collective.

Going a bit out of order because this night was so special...

Getting to Copenhagen from Warsaw is a long day, so Friday went on and on.

The ferry was a nice respite from the 7.5 hours of monotonous 140km/hr hum of the the A2 and autobahn….driving from Gedser to Copenhagen was a mostly pretty ride past rolling farmland and small towns.

Ended up being a late night after dinner, but for me it was great to be back in Copenhagen…I was born here, lived in Denmark until I was 5 years old and still have family here, including my father and sister. It’s isn’t home for me, but it feels like it could be.

The show was at the Artists Collective, a 4th floor warren of artists studios located in a former city hospital across the street from the backside of Tivoli. Jules & Geoff have known Michael, one of the collective's founders, for a few years.

He's long wanted to arrange a show with us where short films made by Collective artists would screen behind us as we played, and this tour was in part built around this show.

It was possible that this show would be sort of a denouement after the electricity, great vibe and end-of-set mayhem of the Warsaw show. Indeed we all seemed a bit hung-over from Warsaw...not in the alcohol sense, but in the adrenaline come down and knowing we were at the end of the tour.

The adrenaline surged again from the first notes. Once again we played a fantastic set in a small space. We've dialed in our sound to make small rooms work, maybe even better than larger spaces. Here we had the crowd of about 50 people right on top of us, and the films were projected to a screen behind the drum kit.

At my request, Race to Mars was the starter before we ramped up the pace. Only Repeater slowed things down later, but the crowd stayed with us on everything we did. Of course it helped to have a roomful of friends and supporters, but even my friends who didn't know much of the band came away impressed.

It was our 10th show in 16 days, 4th show in 5 days. We were playing the last notes of the tour in the city of my birth, a city the rest of the band came to love right away in a space that was perfect for our sensibilities...the night was all adrenaline and emotion combined with the musical cohesion that comes from playing night after night. I'm pretty sure it exceeded all of our expectations, and we couldn't have had a better end to the tour.


photo by Rachel Znerold using my camera

Copenhagen set list:
Race to Mars
Duck and Cover
Mountain
Black and White
Repeater
Day for Night
Slowboat

For the 1st time on the tour we got a raucous request for an encore, so we obliged with Illuminate with the Transmission outro, with Geoff handing off his guitar to a guy in the crowd (who turned out to be a good friend of two of my friends) while the rest of us banged and clashed and created a wall of feedback and noise. We went off loudly into a very good night.

If there was a denouement, it was the late-night döner that Geoff, Julie and I had with Michael. Standing out front of the main railway station in the cool night air we were able to breathe and relax a little bit, share good company, good doner, and let our emotions settle.

Provincial towns you jog 'round

Strasbourg-Regensburg, June 22

One day beyond the autobahn and we’re were right back on it for a 4-hour ride to Regensburg, north and slightly west of Munich, in the heart of Bavaria.

Regensburg is a lovely medieval town on the banks of the Danube as the river flows eastward out of Germany and into Austria. Dating back when the Romans ruled the area, the town grew rapidly from the 6th century on. It was an important city in the Holy Roman Empire from the mid-17th to early 19th centuries. It’s the living embodiment of preserved medieval charm. It’s filled with students and stylish vacationers.

It’s also a got-damned pain in the ass place to be driving a van.

Narrow, curved streets, most of them going one-way then leaving you with no outlet. Clearly designed to confuse and repel marauding forces and rock bands in vans.

Parking issues aside, we had a blast. The folks promoting the show did a great job getting people out, and the crowd were fabulous and enthusiastic. They took wonderful care of us. After the our show they kept the bar open so we could watch the US v Portugal World Cup match. And they put us up in a hostel just down the street. The Mono Bar staff were incredibly cool and gracious.

The space is super-small, we barely fit. Knowing that we had to keep volume down, and this being the 3rd show in 3 nights, plus the vibe of the people and the room, we had a great show.

We opened with a dreamy Race to Mars and then kept a nice pace going for the next 40 minutes and 7 songs. By now we’re hitting the changes and tempos. The drones are getting more interesting. I found a space where I could focus on changing rhythmic patterns ever-so-slightly every 12-16 bars. I found new ways to move through the long drones and add to what the others were playing, filling in spaces, supporting when needed…when things click like they did in Regensburg it does produce a certain euphoria. It’s easy to give yourself over to the moment of playing, knowing you’re locked into what’s happening all around. A sublime show, our favorite yet of the tour.

Regensburg set list:
Race to Mars
Duck and Cover
Mountain
Wired
Illuminate
Black and White
Day for Night
Slowboat

French Disko

Köln-Strasbourg, June 21

Our first show outside of Germany was in Strasbourg, France. This was a get-in/get-out experience; late afternoon arrival, driving from Köln, out early the next morning for a long drive to Regensburg. No time to see anything of Strasbourg beyond where we were playing. Normally about a 3.5 hour trip, we added time for Scott to meet up with relatives at a highway rest stop in southwestern Germany near the border by Strasbourg.

The show was at Hall des Chars, an art/performance space on the outskirts of the town centrum, a short walk across the river from the Petite-France area. A DIY kind of night, we played in a long room, the gear set up on the floor about 1/3 of the way in. As with all of the DIY/art spaces where we played, the people treated us very well. Josh, who runs the Hall, was also bartender for the night and put us up at his apartment.

For this show, we were joined once again (and for the last time on the tour) by The History of Colour TV and a Scandinavian free-form jazz combo Yes Deer.

Once again, we played to around 25-30 people. Not only was the venue a bit out of the way, we were competing with Fete de la Musique, a day of music across many countries. Scott took pre and post-show strolls downtown to check it out, reporting back on good-sized crowds and good music.

By this point we had played 4 shows, and this was the 2nd in 2 nights. We could feel the build from the Köln set…even better attention to dynamics and to each other, especially on the drone outros. We took advantage of the plentiful space behind the stage to add some showmanship to the opening…Geoff beginning with a few minutes of noise loops before we walk from behind the stage to our instruments to start with Little King. From that mellow opening it was a steady stream of uptempo, right thru a strong close with Slowboat.

Strasbourg set list:
Little King
Duck and Cover
Mountain
Wired
Energy
Day for Night
Slowboat

If you've noticed that Anon has been missing from the set two straight shows, that's no accident. After it didn't work that well in Oldenburg, we decided to strike it from the rotation.

The only damper on the night was finding out the the History of Colour TV van was broken into…passenger window smashed, GPS and a sleeping bag stolen. For Marcus that meant a long ride back to Berlin sitting next to a bed-sheet covered window. It also meant explaining what happened to the guy who rented them the van. But he rents vans to bands for travel, so this can’t be the first time a window’s been smashed.

It was a blast touring with HoCTV…they’re good people, good musicians, fun to hang out with. Their sound is a bit darker than ours, but listening more and listening closely, plus hanging out with Jaike and Marcus, you see that there’s a strong melodic sensibility there. It ended up being a good mix of bands...different enough, but similar at the core. Jaike’s vocals are a bit buried in the studio mixes, but live, especially in sound-check, we could tell that he’s got a great voice…expansive, expressive. We’d miss touring with them…the next show would be just us, followed by a few dates with other bands, mainly Evvolves.

Thanks to our gregarious and gracious host Josh, the night was late and sleep was short. Awaiting us Sunday was a long drive to the Bavarian city of Regensburg.

This is the New Art School

Oldenburg-Brühl-Köln, June 19 & 20

A very late post-show night in Oldenburg led to a 2pm departure for Köln. Along the way we had a kernel of an idea to head to Brühl, about 20km or so south of Köln. Why Brühl? Well, that’s where the Max Ernst Museum is. While I know of Ernst, I’m not all that knowledgable about him; the others in the band were keen to go so it sounded like a good idea. And it was. We ended up having a nice off-night in Brühl, a small-town respite from the mostly big city settings on the tour.

From the road we booked a place through air bnb, the top floor of a building owned by a local artist named Günter Wagner. Rain and traffic slowed down the drive, so it wasn’t until about 5:30pm that we got to Brühl, too late to see the Ernst museum, which closes at 6p. After check-in we relaxed for a bit, had a beer, watched the Columbia and Ivory Coast World Cup match, then went to Brühl centrum to find dinner and a place to watch what turned out to be a rather disappointing England v. Uruguay match (disappointing for me, rooting for England). Turned out to be a disappointing dinner as well. In the compromise to find a place showing the game and still serving food at 9pm, we ended up at what seemed to be the TGI Friday’s of Brühl.

The next day would be the drive into Köln, but beforehand while waiting for the Ernst Museum to open we took a walk around the Schloss Augustusburg, worth it for no other reason that to be outside in fresh country air after 5 days in cities.

Except for the Warhol and Rodin Museums, I can’t recall having been to too many museums dedicated to one artists. Special shows, yes, but not entire museums. When well curated, as is the Warhol Museum, you’ll get a perspective on the artist along both chronological and thematic axis.

The Ernst Museum did a good job of combining the two approaches, leaning a bit more on thematic. What I didn’t know about Ernst was how accomplished he was in multiple media - painting, sculpture and illustration, and how instrumental he was in the formation of the surrealist and Dada movements.

One of the more touching sections was the two walls dedicated to the paintings he gave his wife Dorothea Tanning, one per year for more than 20 years.

After Ernst it was on to Köln and more art, this time at the Ludwig Museum and its collection of modern and contemporary, including a fair number of Warhol and Picasso. As you’ve probably guessed by now, art and football have more or less been our top two priorities after music.

When it’s made sense, we’ve made the effort to get to museums and other art spaces. The World Cup groups stage matches have been at 6p, 9p and midnight Central Europe Time; when we’re not setting up or playing, it’s easy to find a spot to watch a match. More on that later.

That evening there was business to take care of, a show at the Tsunami Club. It’s a smallish space with a small stage, but a good vibe. Dennis and Michael, the promoters for the night, treat the bands well, both at the club and after - they each graciously opened their homes to us after the show. My cousin Marius, studying in Köln for a few months, made it out to the show with a couple of friends. It’s good to have friends and family along the route, to seeing familiar faces among all the new people we meet.

The show itself was excellent. We’d now played 4 shows in a week, 5 since the June 8 show in SF, and we can feel the performances getting better each time. It’s becoming less about remembering parts and more about listening to each other, playing well as a unit and starting to stretch the possibilities in the drone parts. This show marked the first of a three-show in three-night stretch. I’m now especially interested to see how that pace will affect performance.

Set list for Köln:
Black and White
Mountain
Wired
Illuminate
Duck and Cover
Day for Night
Slowboat

Next stop…Strasbourg, France.

Paddle forward

What kind of day has Friday, June 27 been? A long one. It began in Warsaw with a departure at 9:30am. It's now 1:40am, and I'm in my sister's apartment in Copenhagen. Along the way we drove 811km to Rostock, Germany, took a 2 hour ferry ride to Gedser, Denmark. Then drove another 160+km to Copenhagen.  Had a lovely meal at Mother. Were surprised to see the sky so bright at 10:00pm. I was surprised by the next-door neighbors having a loud dance party...which has now subsided.

No real updates since the Berlin-Oldenberg run. At least nothing posted...plenty has been written.  Time to turn the sketches into stories. For now it's enough to think about how we have one show left in the tour...it's been two weeks since we started, and this feels at once like it was yesterday and it feels like it was long ago...

The Extension Trip

Thanks to intermittent wifi and a sped up pace of city-hopping, updates have fallen by the wayside. So before the next full update comes, a few pics...

First, from the Oldenburg show, a couple of shots taken by a friend of the promoter Alex. Unfortunately I can't remember the name...

And here, from today in Warsaw. How we watched the US-Germany game before and after soundcheck. I'm hoping to write a bit about how the World Cup has shaped the trip.

Ok, time to go play a show...

The Race is on Again

Berlin-Oldenburg June 18

After our north-north-east swing from Frankfurt to Leipzig to Berlin, it’s time to head west to Oldenburg. The day started with gear load in at the History of Colour TV’s rehearsal space.


Then it was onto the Autobahn for the 4+ hour drive. After three days of staying put in Berlin, the city-hopping now begins…mostly one night in each city until Copenhagen.

Loading up the History of Colour TV's van.

Again, a mostly uneventful drive westward. Construction and accident delays ate into our slack time, so we were a bit late getting to the radio station for Geoff and Jules to do the interview and a couple of songs on acoustic guitar. Polyester is located in the center of town, across from the museums, near to the pedestrian shopping area. The club doesn’t host that many live bands, about 1 or 2 per month we were told.

.......At a halt on the autobahn

Alex, the promoter for the show, is a very gracious guy. Made the show flyers, helped us with promo to get Geoff and Jules on local radio to play a couple of songs and talk up the show. He even put us up at his live-work space.

The work part of live-work was made plain when the people who work in the office where me and the 2 HoCT guys slept (me on a couch, with the best night of sleep I’ve had so far) came into their space at 10am to work. Clearly Alex had hosted many bands before, so they were used to seeing strange people on their couch and floor. They tolerated us being here for a couple of hours…even made us coffee.

We played to about 20-25 people. Mostly they appreciated what we did. We tried a variation on the set; less of the full-on drones - no Illuminate, Black & White or Duck and Cover. We ended with Little King, which provided a nice dreamy counterpoint to the power of Slowboat right before. Little King starts quiet and builds in dynamic...not so much a tempo change as a volume and intensity change. If we play it well, there's a moment..a surge...that takes over. I felt it in Oldenburg...I dug in deeper on the notes on the repeating outro pattern while Scott's tom-heavy part built up to a nice crescendo.

Anon, which went over well at the Hemlock in SF and Leipzig, fell flat tonight. I couldn't tell if the crowd wasn't into the drawn out mid-tempo parts of it or if we didn't play it as well as we could have. Sometimes you know if you messed up or if the crowd just isn't into what you're doing. Not sure where on that continuum Anon was tonight.

Oldenburg set list:
Mountain
Wired
Day 4 Night
Anon (I, II & IV)
Slowboat
Little King

We didn’t get to see Oldenburg at all…only a brief pre-soundcheck walk through the centrum, just the pedestrian mall parts of it. It took a bit of time to sort out where we’d be storing the gear so sleep didn’t come until after 3am. On a day that started at 10am. No surprise that we didn’t get on the road the next day until around 2pm.

I've heard a rumour from Ground Control

Berlin layover June 13-18

The drive from Leipzig to Berlin was unremarkable. Mostly highway, little traffic. A smooth ride on the Autobahn. We did have to rush a bit packing up in our Noch Besser Leben rooms (*)…after coffee and bagels across the street, we came back to find the cleaning woman about to start breaking down the beds…she saw us and waved her hands and told us to start packing and go. So off we went.

In Berlin I stayed with a friend I know from SF, on the Kreuzberg/Mitte border, on a block where the Berlin Wall ran. Chad’s apartment is right where the border used to be. Now there’s a big pond, some greenery…it’s situated near Oranienstraße (a main shopping/restaurant street in Kreuzberg) but is on a quiet block. The best of both worlds. The rest of the band landed an Air BnB place in Friedrichshain, nearer to the club we were playing. My sister Louise and her friend Signe joined me there. Chad is an uber-mensch for putting us all up in his place.

I’d been to Berlin before, for a week back in June 2009. So I didn’t need to spend tons of time sightseeing. The only must-do on the agenda was the David Bowie exhibit at the Martin-Gropius Bau.

Louise & I went on Monday…a good choice. It wasn’t crowded, we didn’t need timed tickets, just walked right in.

...Stools, part of the Ai Wei Wei exhibit at Martin Gropius Bau

The exhibit was career-spanning, though in time-line mostly stopped the detail at the Berlin period of Heroes, Low and Lodger. Everything up to and including that era was presented in rich detail and context, so we see where his initial influences came from (the London singer-songwriter movement spurred on by the Beatles) to how he started to create personas and mold his music to the characters and situations he created. I’ve long been a Bowie fan; this exhibit deepened my appreciation for him. The Berlin era is my favorite, and that period received excellent treatment. We saw a few candid shots of Bowie, Iggy, the recording staff, recording space…you saw how the Berlin of the late 1970s affected the change in his music.

Beyond that, the time in Berlin for me was mostly about wandering. To get to the Bowie exhibit we walked from Chad’s apartment. To meet Scott the next day at Pergamon I walked.

....Miletus Market Gate at the Pergamon

Getting back to the apartment from Museum Island I walked along the Spree as far as I could on the river walk path. On Sunday, Chad, Signe and I walked through Charlottenburg, then into Tiergarten near the museum. We met up a bit later with another friend of Chad’s, watched football in a biergarten…generally meandered. We did finish the night at a somewhat fancy cocktail bar, the Green Door. Good drinks and great people watching form some regulars, friends of the bartenders. Including one guy wearing a white shirt, white pants with large black checker boxes, white belt and white shoes. French, of course. Takes a bold man to make that fashion choice work. Or maybe it helps being French.

Monday night was a big World Cup night. Germany-Portugal and the US-Ghana were the key matches. The Germany match started at 6pm Central Euro time, the US match at midnight. You didn’t need to be watching to know when Germany scored…the entire city seemed to yell at once. And they yelled 4 times in that match. The first half of the Germany match I watched at a cafe/bistro near Chad’s place, where a tv was set-up outside. Needless to say, just about every place with beer and/or food, had this kind of set up for the World Cup. I needed up watching much of the US match seated at a picnic bench on the sidewalk in front of a bodega-type shop. Bought a soda, sat with some other folks, we talked and made friends for an hour.

Berlin is one of those cities I appreciate but don’t connect with in any immediate way. Some of it might be because I grew up in Philadelphia, which is laid out mostly on a grid and on a numbering system that makes logical sense. Between that and some downtown landmarks visible from much of the area, it’s easy to figure out where you are. Berlin’s streets curve and angle. Some change names every few blocks. You can look up and see the tv tower, but because it’s mostly the same on all sides with nothing else as tall for reference, it’s not immediately obvious what direction to go unless you know the angle of the sun and shadows. I suppose being there longer I’d get to know which U-Bahn or S-Bahn stops are where and they could be location markers.

* Noch Besser Leben provides lodging for bands in a room or two down the hall from the music room. Meaning load-in is a 20 foot walk. Nice and easy.

Written in Reverse

As I mentioned in the Berlin show notes, it’s important for me to get some down/quiet/alone time before a show. I need to collect my thoughts and focus on playing. Especially if the day has been (or still is) hectic and no-stop. Berlin was a late night after a couple of hours or so of driving and plenty of socializing before the show.

I figured out that I need this a few years ago. My band Gosta Berling was playing at El Rio in SF, as part of pour short-lived Vie le Rock series. We would invite one or two other bands to play, and also have a local film-maker present some work. In this case, I’d set up the whole show, from bands to film-maker. I was keyed in on set-times, flow of the night, setting up the stage to show the film…I was both musician and event coordinator. I got a bit amped up and was scattered…all over the place. I played like shit.

Since then I’ve made a point of making show nights as relaxed as possible. Minimize distractions, focus on the set. If possible get some down/alone/quiet time beforehand…a walk, sitting in a dressing room or quiet space in the venue. Think through the set.

I’m making sure I do this each night on this tour. We’re doing long-drives, usually 3-4 hours though unfamiliar areas. Sometimes we don’t go on until 11pm or so, after being up and packing and on the road from 10am, after having been out late the night before. And we have no road crew or tour manager, so we’re doing everything. Managing the brain is as important as managing the body.

Our Trinitone Blast

Leipzig-Berlin, June 14

Berlin was a long day.

We drove from Leipzig, leaving around 1pm for the 2.5 hour trip.Soundcheck was 6pm, and took a while to get monitor and house sound right. Then we didn’t play until after midnight. Plus I had a bit of extra nerves playing in front of my sister, her friend Signe (neither had ever seen me pay and came to Berlin from Copenhagen for the show) and friends Chad and Monal (and friends Monal brought).

Now I know why touring bands need quiet dressing rooms, or down-time in the van or bus to chill a bit before the show. At least those musicians with some amount of introvert tendencies (like me…about a 55-45 split on the IE scale in most tests I’ve taken). Introverts like people, we just need to recharge alone or in quiet. From experience I know that to be at my best for a show I need 10-20 minutes of down/alone/quiet time if I’m to play well and clear my head enough to be in the moment and respond to what’s happening on stage. In Berlin, my tactic was to look at the set-list Jules gave me and mentally run thought the changes. I did it while The History of Colour TV were playing and then again during the stage change-over. It helped me calm and focus.


The set was hard and driving...

Black and White
Mountain
Division
Duck and Cover
Energy
Repeater
Illuminate
Day for Night
Slowboat

No real let-up in intensity. Even Repeater, which we deliberately put in as a break from the drone, is heavy and mid-tempo, almost dirge-like (but a higher BPM dirge). It felt like we were pummeling the audience with power, speed, and drone. Day for Night and Energy, two of the ostensibly poppier songs in the set (relative to songs from the EP and 1st side of the new album), featured long drone outros that built up in intensity as we laid into the beat.

Berlin as a city, and Antje Öklesund as a space, seemed appropriate for that kind of approach. Antje Öklesund is in a former furniture-making factory in the Friedrichshain section of Berlin, in what was East Berlin near Karl Marx Allee. It’s on Rigaer Straße, up the block from a bunch of squatter buildings that apparently draw police action on Saturday nights (*).

Friedrichshain in general is a bit grittier…apparently what Prenzlauer Berg used to be, what parts of Kreuzberg used to be. The room itself is all stone…floors, walls, with high ceilings. Though there are lovely bits of geometric pattern shapes hanging from the ceiling for color and depth, it’s still not a warm room, like Noch Besser Lebben. The vibe of our set fit the vibe of the room and the neighborhood.

* - Before the show, the same squatters who drew multiple police vans were staging shopping cart races down Rigaer Straße. After the show, we walked down Rigaer Straße to see what was going on. Near as we could tell the police were more there to intimidate the squatter crowds, and there was no real intent for violence. Just posturing. Though we did see one forlorn attempt at a mattress fire.

Tomorrow is Already Here

Thirty-six hours in Leipzig didn’t leave me with any deep insights about the city, but I did notice a few things.

Most important, after being corrected a few times, know to pronounce it lipe-zig, not leep-zig.

It seems to be a city that skews young. Or at least, the areas in which I spent ay time, Centrum and Lindenau, a bit south and west of Centrum, about a 10 minute tram ride away. Centrum is the downtown, the older part of the city. The University of Leipzig is there, so there were plenty of students around, even in mid June. Enrollment is around 28,000 and in a city of 530,000 that many students will stand out. Also, per this October 2012 piece in Der Spiegel, Leipzig has become a magnet for young artists thanks to a low cost of living.

The Lindenau neighborhood, where Noch Besser Leben is located, looks to be on the verge of gentrification. Next to freshly painted and (I’d assume) rehabbed buildings are unpainted, graffiti marked walls. Noch Besser Leben is in one of the (for now, I assume) unpainted buildings. Though there was a guy working on the hallway, fixing the plaster moulding, painting…so maybe the building will look very different if we were to come back in a couple of years. A few doors down from Noch Besser is a fancy juice bar and health food store. There are art spaces all around, hipsters on bikes (not too many fixes though), parents pushing prams. For Philadelphians, think Northern Liberties before the demand really hit. Or Fishtown once Northern Liberties over-developed, but before Fishtown would change. For New Yorkers think Williamsburg or Jersey City when those areas were in transition. Then mix in an unconstrained graffiti culture and the lingering remains of post-Eastern Bloc decay.

Ur-Krostitzer is the local beer, and pretty good.

I now wish we had a bit more time to hang in Leipzig. But off to Berlin we had to go…

Five Cornered Drone

Leipzig June 13

Can’t say enough good things about Noch Besser Leben in Leipzig. The staff there treated us very well, especially Timm who helped us arrange back line and then did our sound.  The music room is on the second floor of the building, above the bar. It’s essentially an apartment - two main rooms and a small bar area that likely used to be the kitchen.  No stage, so we played right on the carpeted floor, with about 20-25 chairs set out facing us. The carpet and the wood moulding made for a nice warm sound, and meant we didn’t have to turn the volume down as much as we thought for such a small space. Once the room filled up with people plenty of sound was being absorbed. Good sound combined with the adrenaline rush of it being the first show of the tour made for a very good set, a great start to the tour.  We played a mix of old and new, including almost the entire new album. 

Set list:

Black and White

Mountain

Division

Race to Mars

Energy

Anon I, II & IV

Puzzle

Wired 

Illuminate

Slowboat

Mountain, Energy and Illuminate ended up in some intense sustained drone outros with some cool in-the-moment bits like Geoff sitting in an open chair in the first row, Jules with some keyboard vamps and sounds and me (on Illuminate) taking advantage of the drone in D to play the open D and repeat the opening riff underneath. We played for a little over an hour, long when you consider most sets in the US on 3-band nights are between 35-45 minutes, usually 40. We could feel a bit of a drag in The Puzzle and Wired but we finished strong on Slowboat. Getting used to playing longer sets will be a good thing…we'll learn how to manage energy and intensity on a longer arc, how to read crowds and keep them with us as we vary tempo and dynamics.

The crowd were great. We had about 25 people there, none of whom likely knew much if anything about us. They paid attention, there was hardly any chatter, hardly any staring down at smartphones, warm applause when songs finished. After the show a few folks also came up to talk, and we sold a few records. All in all, a very successful start to the tour.

Flying Lesson

San Francisco-Frankfurt-Leipzig, June 11-12

“Spec Bebop” by Yo La Tengo was the first song to play on the shuffle as I drove to SFO. I’m taking that as a good omen for the tour.

The tour…finally here after months and months of planning, discussing, working out schedules, emailing with promoters and bands, routing and re-routing. Julie gets most of the credit for making this happen. She was tenacious in tracking down like-sounding bands, convincing them to book dates with us, getting them to help us back line, figuring out payment and lodging details. Others chipped in as well, me with putting together maps and directions, booking the car, a ferry, a room in Prague, arranging lodging in Copenhagen. But most of the credit for making this a reality goes to Jules.

(pro-tip...Mono cases for checking instruments on flights. As good as advertised)

The flight itself was routine. We took off, we landed. Meals were served, including pretty decent (as airplane food goes) vegetarian curry. But, this being United, certain things were lacking. No free wine or beer (unlike Geoff and Jules on Lufthansa), no seat-front entertainment. I ended up in the first row of coach behind business class, with nothing but a thin curtain, never fully closed, between us. So I got to see the full service…linen on the tray, real tableware, plastic cutlery at least colored silver, free flowing wine. The oddest thing about United b-class on this plane was the configuration. The rows were alternated front and rear orientation. Which meant for the entire flight I was looking right at a guy facing to the rear of the plane. It was also a bit disorienting getting on the plane…seeing half the rows facing rear made me wonder which side of the plane I boarded. 

We all met up in Frankfurt, got the van (with a bit of sticker shock on insurance costs), and off we went to Leipzig.  Scott got to talking about castles with a guy working at a rest-stop and he suggested Wartburg Castle above the town of Eisenach (where Martin Luther studied for a bit, JS Bach was born). Ended up being a grand idea. By the time we got there, a bit after 6:30, the crowds were gone and we had the place almost to ourselves. We were rewarded with spectacular early evening views of the valley and the quiet of the nearly deserted castle grounds. Sometimes it’s the detour that makes the trip.

(our ride)

We arrived in Leipzig around 9:30p, and after wrangling the room situation went off in search of food, beer and fußball, which we did find at a little joint up the street. A nightcap, then finally off to bed.

(Wartburg Castle)

Big Day Coming

Music has been my main creative outlet since I was 19. With one brief exception when my band the Idle Wilds went to Memphis to make a record for RCA (but didn't come out on RCA...that's a story for later), I've never attempted to make my livelihood from music. Though music has always been much more than a hobby, it's never been my career.

That said, I'd still say I've had a a career in music. I've played on all or parts of 4 LPs, 3 EPs, a couple of singles and a bunch of demos and one-off recordings. I've gotten to play places like CBGB's in New York, The Roxy and the Echo in LA, Bottom of the Hill in SF, the Khyber Pass and JC Dobbs in Philadelphia. I've signed the aforementioned major label deal and had the all-too-common major label dumping. I've had some transformative experiences, some really great, some not so great. Magic moments on stage, in the rehearsal or recording studio. Good times with bandmates and shitty band break-ups. 

For all the things on my rock-and-roll resume, I've never done a proper tour. 

This summer...this week, that changes. 

I'm heading to Europe to play bass with Slowness, in support of the just-released album (on which I played on a few tracks) - 

How to Keep From Falling Off a Mountain 
(stream & buy mp3 here, buy vinyl here)

Between June 13 and June 28 we're playing 10 shows in 10 cities in 5 countries. 

June 13 Leipzig Noch Besser Lebben
June 14 Berlin Antje Öklesund
June 18 Oldenburg Polyester Klub
June 20 Cologne Tsunami club
June 21 Strasbourg Hall de Chars
June 22 Regensburg Mono Bar
June 24 Prague Rock Cafe
June 25 Poznan LAS
June 26 Warsaw Chmury
June 28 Copenhagen The Artists Collective Tietgensgade

The plan is to use this space as a tour diary...show recaps, travel stories, random observations. Updates will come as often as decent wifi service allows.

We had a great start to the tour (in the same way the Tour de France sometimes starts outside of France) with a show this past Sunday at the Hemlock in SF. Hopefully the magic will continue through the next few weeks. Check this space to see what happens...

-greg